- Changed the display of the 'Armor Class' statistic to show its component parts: 'Mitigation' and 'Evasion':
- - Although the new numbers are lower, your effective Armor Class is the same. These new numbers have always been used in combat calculations (see below for more details).

*** Items ***

- Increased the spell damage on some pieces of Selrach's armor so there is not a downgrade on the set between it and Cohort's armor.
- Corrected the name of the focus effect on Velazul's Soulrender Breastplate to be 'Deflection Discipline Duration' rather than 'Focused Arrowrain Fury'.
- Corrected a bug that prevented a number of Empires of Kunark items with activated spells from unlocking the correct passive Alternate Advancement ability.
- Mana of the Sarnak Compressor is now an eight slot container, allowing it to be used as an alternative for players without skills in tradeskills.

*** Quests And Events ***

- Atrebe's Vault (Raid and Group) - It should no longer be possible for the event to spawn NPCs when the raid is not in progress, for example shortly after a success or reset.
- Maestro of Rancor (PoP Era, Hateplaneb) (Raid) - Damaging Maestro will no longer prevent him from using his mechanics. For example, the accompanists will spawn at the organ even if he was reduced from 100% to 70% health in one tick.
- Innoruuk (PoP Era, Hateplaneb) (Raid) - It is no longer possible to kill the large version of Innoruuk without also killing the Evangelist of Hate first. This will prevent the raid from getting into a state where the untargetable Evangelist of Hate would spawn adds indefinitely.
- Atrebe Sathir (Raid) - Ultimate Siphon Pulse now drains mana and endurance instead of endurance and endurance.
- The Crystal Bloom (Group) - Wary ol' Krange, wary though he may be, has returned to the Korascian Warrens.
- Karana the Rainkeeper (Raid) - Restored a dialog that was intended to take place between Askr the Lost and Karana at the conclusion of this event.
- Drogan Toes - The first step will no longer suggest that you should get Drogan Toes from the quest giver, Vasyryx Teken`tlar.
- Drogan Toes - Fixed the hand-in of Drogan toes to Vasyryx in Frontier Mountains.
- Queen Velazul Di`Zok (Raid) - Queen Velazul in the Chardok raid event will now make it very clear when she casts Reflective Scales.
- The quest Guilds and the Guild Lobby again work correctly.
- Faldor Hendrys has returned from an over-a-decade-long vacation and can again be found in North Qeynos.
- Fixed some dialogue errors with Ralla Merow'shu in Chardok. She should now properly give out the quest Their Own Medicine.
- Removed dozens of bad LDoN adventure definitions that could send you to kill a low level Miragul's Menagerie spider in a high level Balancing Chambers Takish-Hiz dungeon.
- The brazier teleporters in Solusek Ro's Tower will no longer give a character a flag if they already have one. This should reduce lag and confusion.
- The items necessary to spawn Captain Krasnok in Hate's Fury can now be acquired much more easily.
- Fixed some issues with the Avatar of Wind, Avatar of Dust, Spider and 'Turkeybee' events in Plane of Air.
- Fixed an issue that was causing the Unstable Potion in the first Kor'Sha raid to not work properly.

*** Spells ***

- Improved messaging when a spell that you have cast has been overwritten:
- - Two new filterable chat colors have been created for beneficial and detrimental spells being overwritten.
- - The message 'Your Spellname spell on Target has been overwritten.' replaces the message 'Your Spellname spell has worn off of Target.' when your spell is overwritten by another spell.
- - This message will not display when a spell that you cast on yourself is overwritten by yourself.
- Bard - Increased the damage dealt by all four 'Chant' DoT/Debuff lines of spells.
- Bard - Added a cast time and duration to Soothing Psalm of the Sunrise so it will now work like most other songs.
- Wizard - Corrected an issue that caused the Vortex Effect debuff triggered from the Shocking Vortex line of spells to fade earlier than intended.

*** AA ***

- Fixed a bug with rank 4 of Trophy Collector that prevented it from functioning.

*** NPCs ***

- Many of the nobles in Kael Drakkel have shed their cumbersome armor and waxed their mustaches to return to the refined appearance they had pre-2005.

*** Progression Servers ***

- Fixed issue that could cause triggered bosses in Velious raid instances to spawn on zone up. Now they should not.
- Fixed several instances that would cause characters to be teleported to base zones instead of the instance, such as in Planes of Nightmare and Torment.
- Respawns should no longer happen in Phinigel progression server instances, except where they are important to boss fights.
- Vulak, Avatar of War, and Bazzt Zzzt in Phinigel progression server instances will no longer be up on zone startup and will have to be triggered using the expected method.
- Corrected some Progression-server-only requirements for Planes of Power zones. When Planes of Power launches they will require full flagging. Once Lost Dungeons of Norrath launches they will behave as they did from the first time zone access was increased (in 2003) until we again lowered their requirements during the Dragons of Norrath era. The 85/15 rule remains unchanged for these zones.
- - The Plane of Valor can now be entered at level 55 without other flags when Lost Dungeons of Norrath is open. This requirement lowers to level 46 when Dragons of Norrath opens.
- - The Halls of Honor can be entered at level 63 when Lost Dungeons of Norrath is open. This will now lower to 57 when Dragons of Norrath opens. Previously neither exception would work on Progression servers.
- - The Temple of Marr can now be entered at level 62 without other flags when Lost Dungeons of Norrath is open. This requirement now lowers to 57 when Dragons of Norrath opens. Previously there had not been an alternate level requirement for this zone on Progression servers until DoN unlocked it.
- - Drunder, the Fortress of Zek can now be entered at level 62 without other flags when Lost Dungeons of Norrath is open. This requirement will lower to 57 when Dragons of Norrath opens.
- - The Bastion of Thunder can now be entered at level 62 without other flags when Lost Dungeons of Norrath is open. This requirement will lower to 57 when Dragons of Norrath opens. Previously neither exception would ever take effect on Progression servers.
- - The Tower of Solusek Ro can now be entered at level 57 when Dragons of Norrath opens. Previously there was no alternate level requirement available at any time on Progression servers.
- - The Elemental planes (Air, Fire, Water, EarthA and EarthB) can only be entered via flag until Dragons of Norrath opens. At that point any level 60 will be able to enter these zones.
- Many Spell Research recipes are now restricted to an expansion at least three expansions after the spell itself is available.

*** Miscellaneous ***

- Enabled the free trade ruleset for items on Brekt.
- Enabled character transfers to Brekt, except from Firiona Vie.
- Made an adjustment to how NPCs on flight paths animate in order to reduce unnecessary pitching as they traverse through the air.
- Updated attack messaging for a number of NPCs races so that some creatures will 'sting, slice, maul, or claw' rather than 'hit'.
- Fixed an issue with fear spells that would often result in a zone crash. Occurred most commonly in the Revisited Plane of Fear.
- Made various fixes to punctuation and spelling:
- - Added missing direct address comma to many NPC phrases.
- - Added missing comma to set off speaker's tag for say and shout.
- - Corrected several misspellings of Cazic-Thule.
- - Added terminating punctuation to /yell texts.
- Many Planes of Power zones now have load balancing enabled.
- Addressed an issue where fellowship leaders were sometimes randomly changing when a world was restarted.
- Addressed an issue that was causing standard guild halls to not properly spawn.
- Fixed a typo in the faction name Drusella Sathir.
- Mitigation armor class granted from buffs will now function the same for players, player summoned pets, and mercenaries in that it will be subject to the armor class 'soft cap'.
- - This corrects an issue seen on the test server where player summoned pets and mercenaries had their total mitigation AC impacted by the soft cap.

*** UI ***

- Added a velocity label to the stats page of the inventory window which will display your current movement speed.
- Adjusted the formatting of AA ability descriptions to reduce the amount of scrolling necessary to view relevant information for most abilities.
- Changed the display of the 'Attack' statistic to show its component parts: 'Offense' and 'Accuracy':
- - The Offense stat increases your likelihood to deal more damage when you land a melee attack and is countered by your opponent's Mitigation stat.
- - The Accuracy stat increases your likelihood to land a hit on your opponent in melee combat and is countered by your opponent's Evasion stat.
- Changed the display of the 'Armor Class' statistic to show its component parts: 'Mitigation' and 'Evasion':
- - Although the new numbers are lower, your effective Armor Class is the same. These new numbers have always been used in combat calculations.
- - The Mitigation stat increases the likelihood for you to take less damage when you are hit by a melee attack and is countered by your opponent's Offense stat.
- - The Evasion stat increases the likelihood for you to avoid being hit by a melee attack and is countered by your opponent's Accuracy stat.
- - Spell descriptions that report the amount of Armor Class granted by buffs should now report a more accurate value.
- Inspecting a mount, illusion, or familiar item that triggers an additional blessing buff will now list that buff as a 'Blessing' rather than a 'Focus Effect'.
- - Inspecting an item with an activated effect that requires you to be able to equip the item to use will display 'Can Equip' before the casting time. This label will be highlighted in red if you cannot activate the item you are inspecting.
- Fixed an issue with the advanced loot window when looting a no drop item. This occurred only the first time after zoning when no drop confirmation was on.

Looks like it will still be a 8% or so reduction in mitigation, but at least they fixed the 50% unintended reduction that was on Test before it went live. Still, pets have been stagnating for several expansions, a mitigation nerf doesn't seem like it was necessary.

Pets don't have to be played, take up zero group slot and require no leveling gearing or other than owner AA no grinding. I will wait to see if they are "nerfed" to decide. With a live healer I will guess they are still viable tanks after patch.